Betting lines didn’t change much as a result of Wednesday’s debate, but the Bitcoin-friendly entrepreneur has edged out Florida governor Ron DeSantis this past week in the GOP’s race for second place.
In Wednesday night’s first debate for the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential nomination, candidates swapped barbs in an attempt to steal the spotlight from former President Donald Trump, the party’s clear front-runner, who opted to skip out on the debate in favor of an interview with recently ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Assessing any given candidate’s election odds typically means turning to polls or pundits. But pundits are a messy indicator for judging a political race, and polls are too slow to measure things in real-time. Enter prediction markets.
Blockchain-based betting platforms like Polymarket and Manifold have thin legal standing in the United States, but their pitch is that they allow users to bet on practically anything. The accuracy of prediction markets for measuring election odds is debatable, but the tools still provide an interesting bellwether of public opinion.
In a nutshell, the prediction markets show bettors didn’t change their odds-making much as a result of Wednesday’s debate, but they do show that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Bitcoin-friendly entrepreneur who won plaudits for his performance, has overtaken Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the past week as the clear frontrunner to challenge Trump.
Users of Polymarket, the largest blockchain-based prediction market, have put up nearly $5 million so far to bet on the outcome of the Republican nomination race – this despite the fact that Polymarket is illegal to use for placing bets in the United States. In 2022, the U.S. Commodities Futures and Exchange Commission charged Polymarket with facilitating illegal binary swaps. As part of its settlement with the CFTC, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine and agreed to force U.S. users of the platform into “view only” mode.
While Polymarket’s GOP betting lines have been relatively stationary since last night’s debate, one might still expect to see more betting activity (and volatility) as the race progresses given the amount of money that has already flooded the platform in relation to the 2024 presidential race.
As things currently stand, Polymarket’s clear frontrunner – in line with most polling – is Donald Trump.
In betting markets, the higher it costs to vote in favor of a given outcome, the more likely that outcome is considered. On Polymarket, it currently costs 71 cents to bet in favor of a second Trump nomination and 32 cents to bet against. In practical terms, what this means is that if Trump wins the nomination, those who bet in his favor are set to earn $1 for every 71 cents they bet. If he loses, they get nothing.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis entered last night’s debate with the most to win and the most to lose. Once viewed as the biggest GOP threat to a second Trump presidency, Desantis dropped far behind the former president in most polls following a series of campaign shake-ups and funding troubles. If Polymarket’s numbers are anything to go by, DeSantis’s debate performance didn’t immediately appear to move the mark all that much.
In the past week on Polymarket, votes in favor of DeSantis have decreased from 14 cents to 12 cents.
Entrepreneur and right-wing political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy, meanwhile, was…
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/08/24/after-gop-debate-blockchain-bettors-see-ramaswamy-as-most-formidable-trump-challenger/
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